 High Tech News and Information for Southern California |
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You know it’s finally done and over for your high-flying startup, when Cowen and Alexander auctions off the remainder of your office furniture. Amp’d Mobile’s assets are up for sale Monday.
Some more interesting items on the auction list:
We’re trying to build up a good library of unbiased, useful information to entrepreneurs and the local technology community with our Startup section. To that end, we’ve just posted a good primer on patents from Steve Sereboff, Mark Goldstein, and Michael Harris at SoCal IP Law Group to our contributed article section.
Sid Mohasseb over at Venture Farm (and who is also an active angel investor) has a good post on what a lifestyle business is. One thing which I see (and I’m sure lots of angels see, as well) are businesses which — although they may be profitable and growing — are better defined as lifestyle businesses than something venture-fundable. Generally, these businesses don’t have the possibility of rapid scaling, quick merger/acquisition, or other exit that a venture investor would be interested in; however, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good business. It just means you’re unlikely to attract outside investment.
When you start to see a venture capitalist and an Internet publisher debate about an “API” and its importance to a company, you suddenly realize that there’s some silliness afoot in the world when an “API”– short for Application Programming Interface — is the latest buzzword. Perhaps it’s all been driven by the hype over Facebook’s API for third party developers, but suddenly everyone is talking about how having an API is the “next big thing.”
Folks, maybe it’s just the software engineer in me talking (having spent many many years developing software applications, sitting in standards organizations, developing open API standards, and otherwise glued to software development)–but having an API to anything — your software or your Internet software — is the simplest thing in the world. If you have software, you have an API.
An API is just that — an interface to whatever your software does, good or bad. If you can’t turn out a decent API for ANY Internet service or software application– even a simple REST or SOAP service–I don’t know what kind of software developers you are hiring. Sure, it takes a decent software developer to create a well-thought out, easy to use API, but that’s basically what software developers are paid to do all day–create application programming interfaces to their software and algorithms.
It’s not the API that matters– it’s if:
a) Your API provides something useful to the world
b) If you can get software developers to adopt it
C) If anyone cares enough about your service to BOTHER using the API
Just having an API–as in “oh, we have an API, you should fund us”–isn’t enough. Everything has an API — perhaps only available privately, but easily enough exportable — it’s what you do with it.
Speaking of Lunch 2.0, I ran into Douglas Welch, a local blogger/podcaster who runs Career Opportunities there. Douglas has written for such magazines as LAN Magazine, Network World, MacWorld, and Wired, among others. He’s got some pictures from Lunch 2.0 posted on his blog.
Last Friday, I spent some time at a Lunch 2.0 meeting over at ThisNext in Santa Monica, getting a chance to chat with entrepreneurs, technologists, producers, and others in the high tech and entertainment community here. It’s interesting but there has been an upsurge in networking events — particularly in the Internet/Web 2.0 area — looking to connect the high tech community in Los Angeles. The Lunch 2.0 event — which is one of many, newly formed events like Twiistup (and at least 3 other private, invite-only events) which have been bubbling up here — crammed quite a few people (250 RSVPs, with whatever dropouts) into the space where ThisNext usually houses their 12 employees. Gordon Gould, CEO of ThisNext, was telling me he was wondering if the police would show up given how many people were there.
There seems to be a real hunger in the community for connecting with others in the industry. Unlike Silicon Valley, and probably other more geographically centered high tech centers, running into others in the technology industry is a little more difficult here due to “freeway distance.” Even with dozens of events every month, it’s tough to get from Santa Monica to Pasadena, or from Pasadena to Costa Mesa, or (god forbid) Santa Barbara to San Diego on any regular basis.
In any case, it’s clear that the technology community here expands there are bound to be more and more networking events trying to meet the desire for “face time.”
Tired of getting endless credit card offers in your mailbox? Well, start expecting to see them all over your email, as well. A Singapore firm has just rolled out a new credit card, for the popular online virtual world Second Life. The credit card, which is good for the purchase of items in the virtual world, links to a real-life dollars. The credit card allows people to buy things with “Linden Dollars” the virtual currency of Second Life, which people then need to pay off with real (non-virtual) dollars.
socalTECH has a very active job board, where we let people who are members of our premium service post unlimited numbers of positions, and I’m constantly amazed by the amount of demand out there for technical talent.
In particular, there seems to be a lot of demand for software engineers in the Los Angeles area, with Java, Flash, and other web-related experience. I also get lots of people asking me for referrals for software engineers–I think I’ve gotten more queries than people I know who are in the business (and I’m an ex-software engineering manager with lots of contacts!)
Some other recent postings of note:
San Diego-based Veoh, which filed for protection from Universal last month in a pre-emptive lawsuit, has finally been sued by Universal, which says that the video sharing startup is infringing on its copyrights. Veoh, which is backed by former disney chief Michael Eisner, provides an online video sharing web site which allows its users to post their own videos, alongside other content.
It’s looking like a good week for the litigation lawyers, as one of Broadcom’s lawsuits against Qualcomm was also revived yesterday.
I’m constantly surprised by the number of would-be entrepreneurs feel like they need to publicly complain, gripe, or disparage angel investors and venture capitalists — either in the press, in their blogs, or on sites like TheFunded.
Even though Southern California has a growing number of venture capital firms, anyone who has been close to the business realizes that it’s a small, clubby group where deals, companies, and founders are regularly discussed between firms. It’s really a small set of people (I’d hazard a guess less than a 100 key players, if not many less) involved in the business in this area.
One of the key criteria investors use in deciding whether or not to fund your business is the personal reputation of the founders — namely, have you done it before, do you know what you’re doing, can you pull off what you say you will — and how much integrity do you have? It’s a matter of trust.
So, when I see founders who are in the midst of raising capital with one angel group, who are disparaging a different angel group in a presentation; or who complain about a venture investor publicly at a conference or to a different investor–I can only come to one conclusion, which is they are trying to do their best to not get funded. Sure, they might have had a bad experience, or they just didn’t click with an investor–even if their poor opinion of a VC or angel is fully deserved–but given the personal relationships, syndicates, friendships, and overall connected-ness between the venture and angel community, it seems like sharing that is the best way to torpedo your chances at getting funding.
Benjamin Kuo is publisher of socalTECH.com, an online publication focused on high tech, venture capital, and startups in Southern California.
You are currently browsing the Benjamin Kuo’s Blog weblog archives for September, 2007.
